Had a nice time at open mike night at Gabriele's.

I have been taking my mandolin to work, can play on 78 and 287 in NJ when traffic slows to a crawl, I have a CD of Cherish the Ladies, learning some of the Irish tunes they play, got about 4 tunes so far that way. So had to stay over at local hotel in Piscataway and it is next to Gabriele's bar and grill where they just started an open mike thing. I got in with the local band playing backup mandolin which went well surprising me that I could noodle to stuff I never heard before but we did play one tune in honor of Levon, Dylan's Forever Young, which I took a lead on a couple of times. Then after a few folks played, I did some solo guitar work, like Windy and Warm, Deep River Blues and such, playing the band leaders Gibson J100, hooked up to house sound, worked out pretty good, got nice responses from folks later.

A good time was had by all and there were actually some good musicians playing. Usually at an open mike night you get all these wannabies but there was only maybe 2 out of the whole bunch in that category, the rest were fully professional, just having a night out with the boys, dudes with their own band and a couple of pro drummers, one a woman named Lisa who was really a great drummer.